Sight-seeing—Westminster Hall.

My emotions on first entering Westminster Hall, were scarcely inferior to those excited by the Abbey. Of course my first glance was towards the oaken roof, whose noble span, and elaborate construction, have been so largely eulogized, but which derives a richer glory than its material one, from the moral sublimity of the historic events, to which its venerable shadow has been lent. Beneath this roof the Constitution of England has steadily and majestically matured for centuries; and to this spot belongs the somewhat mysterious credit of an assimilating power, akin to that of digestion in the human system. Whatever has been the food, it has always managed to turn it into wholesome nutriment, and to add it to the solid substance of the British State in the shape of bone and sinew, or of veins and nerves. It has been the scene of violence and outrage, and of both popular and imperial tyranny. No matter! Out of all this evil has always come substantial good. The roof dates from Richard Second’s time; and scene the first is the usurpation of the fiery Bolingbroke. Here rose up that daring subject, amid astounded bishops and barons, and crossing himself broadly on the breast, profanely uttered the famous bravado—“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, do challenge this reaume of Englande”—adding mysterious words, from which it is equally difficult to say on what grounds he did or did not rest his claims. Here old Sir Thomas More forfeited his head, for high treason against “the best of princes,” as he had long called old Harry Eighth; and here sat old Hal himself, at Lambert’s trial, interrupting every fresh rejoinder of the reformer, with the savage assurance—“Thou shalt burn, Lambert!” I looked towards the great window beneath which he sat—and, lo! it was no longer a window, but an open way, just constructed for access to the New Houses of Parliament—a noble alteration, and a very speaking symbol too, in my opinion; for thus, in the path of history, and from the seat of law, will the future Senate of the Empire go to their responsible labors as stewards of the noblest inheritance that exists among mankind. Let them think, as they pass, of Strafford and of Charles; how in suffering and sorrow they contributed to the British people that distinguishing element of loyalty, which has rendered healthful their not less characteristic love of liberty. Too many, I fear, imbued with the superficial views of Macaulay, invest with sublimer associations the fanatical Court which tried and condemned their Sovereign. Here sat those bold, bad men; and daring, indeed, was their work; nor do I doubt that it has been over-ruled for good to England; but then it should not be forgotten, that the subsequent history of progressive and rational freedom is far more directly the result of the wholesome resistance opposed by Church and Crown to the spirit of anarchy, than to anything in that spirit itself. Had the King of England been a Bourbon—had the Church of England been a Genevan or a Roman one, that flood must have washed all landmarks away: and the fabric of Constitutional Liberty, which now attracts the admiration of all thinking men, could never have been constructed. Honour, then, to the martyrs of Law and of Religion, who, beneath this roof, built up the only barrier that has turned back the turbulent waves of modern barbarism! I stood, and thought of Charles, with sorrow for his grievous faults, but yet with gratitude for the manly recompense he offered here to a people whom he had unintentionally injured through their own antiquated laws, but whom he defended against the worse tyranny of lawless usurpation, by his majestic protest in this Hall, and by sealing it with his blood. Here, too, the seven bishops delivered the Church and State of England when they stood up against the treacherous son of Charles, and completed the triumph of the Church by proving it as true to the people, as it had been to the throne, on the same foundation of immutable principle. This was the roof that rang with the shouts of vindicated justice, when those fathers of the Church were set free! I looked up, and surveyed every beam and rafter with reverence. The angels, carved in the hammer-beams, were looking placidly down, each one with his shield upon his breast, like the guardian spirits of a nation, true to itself and to ancestral faith and order. The symbol is an appropriate one; for the frame-work of the British Constitution is like this roof of Richard in many respects, but in none more than this—that the strength and beauty of the whole are fitly framed together, with inseparable features of human wisdom and of divine truth; the latter being always conspicuous, and investing all with reverend dignity and grace.

The floor of the old Hall presents a less sentimental aspect, and might easily plunge imagination, by one step, into the ridiculous. Here are the barristers walking about with clients, and with each other, arm in arm, their gray wigs of divers tails, some set awry, and some strongly contrasted with black and red whiskers, giving them a ludicrous appearance; while their gowns, some of them shabby enough, are curiously tucked under the arm, or carelessly dangling about the heels, apparently an annoyance to the wearers, in either case. The several courts were in session, in chambers which open out of the hall, along its sides. I stepped into the Chancellor’s Court, where sat Lord Truro, listening, or perhaps not listening, to the eminent Mr. Bethell. His Lordship in his walrus wig, with a face proverbially likened to the hippopotamus, seemed to represent the animal kingdom, as well as that of which the mace and seal-bag, lying before him, were the familiar tokens. The court-room is very small, popular audiences being not desirable, and open doors being all that popular right can require. Here the same barristers looked far from ludicrous—their attire seemed to fit the place and its duties. Doubtless the influence of such things is an illusion, but nevertheless it is a useful one, and contributes to the dignity, which it only appears to respect. We need some such things in our Republic. Next I stepped into the Vice-Chancellor’s Court, and saw Sir J. L. Knight Bruce administering the law; and here I was introduced to several eminent lawyers, whose cauliflower wigs covered a world of learning and of grave intelligence. Stepping into the Common Pleas, there sat in a row, Lord Chief Justice Jervis, and Justices Creswell, Williams and Talfourd. I could not but look with interest at the author of Ion, but in the disguise of his magistracy, I looked in vain for any feature which I could identify with his portraits. In the Court of Queen’s Bench, Lord Campbell was presiding, with three others; in the Bail Court, I saw Justice Coleridge; and in the Court of Exchequer, Lord Chief Baron Pollock, with Barons Park, Platt and Martin. Thus, with the greatest facility, and in a very short space of time, can one see the most favoured sons of the British Themis, and gain a good idea of the dignity and close attention to business with which these courts are managed. The Supreme Court of our own country, is far inferior in appearance, although it is the only American Court which admits of any comparison with these, and yet it is allowed on all hands, that “the law’s delay” in England is an intolerable grievance, and that the expense of obtaining justice, at these tribunals, is of itself a crying injustice.

Sallying forth into the street, I went round to view the rising splendours of the Victoria Tower, the massive proportions of which almost dwarf those of the Abbey. It confuses the beholder by the elaborate richness of its details, its profuse symbolism, and all the variety of its heraldic and allegorical decoration. When completed, it will give a new, but harmonious aspect, to the acres of sacred and princely architecture which spread around; but these English builders are very slow in its construction, and prefer that it should rise only ten feet a year, rather than hazard its chance of continuing forever. How differently we go ahead in America! This new palace of Westminster will still be many years in finishing, but it is worthy of the nation to let it thus grow after its own fashion. Alas! one fears, however, that it is to be made the scene of the gradual taking down of the nation itself. It is too likely to prove the house in which John Bull will be worried to death by his own family.

In company with a friend, I next “took water” at Westminster bridge, for a trip down the river. This silent highway is now as busy as the Strand itself—the spiteful little steamers that ply up and down, being almost as numerous and as noisy as the omnibusses. Very swiftly we glide along the river’s graceful bend, passing Whitehall, Richmond Terrace, and the house lately occupied by Sir Robert Peel; shooting under Hungerford bridge, past old Buckingham house, and the Adelphi Terrace, and so under Waterloo bridge, to the Temple Gardens, where we land, and where I find myself delighted with the casual survey of the different walks and buildings, and especially with the Temple Church. Emerging into Fleet-street, choked with carts and carriages, here is Temple-bar! Passing under its arches, we are in the Strand, and so make our way to Charing-Cross. Having made a complete circuit, by land and water, I again went to Westminster bridge, and stepping into a steamer sailed up the river to Chelsea. Here we pass the river-front of the New Houses of Parliament; and granting that there is a monotony of aspect in the long stretch of the pile, as it rises from the water, I think it must be allowed that, when complete, with its towers and decorations, the whole, taking the Abbey also into view, will furnish the noblest architectural display in the world. Westminster bridge should be reconstructed, in harmony with the rest, and then, whoever may find fault with the scene, may be safely challenged to find its parallel for magnificence and imperial effect.

And yet looking to the other side of the river, how far more attractive to my eye were the quiet gardens and the venerable towers of Lambeth! Its dingy brick, and solemn little windows, with the reverend ivy spreading everywhere about its walls, seemed to house the decent and comely spirit of religion itself: and one could almost gather the true character of the Church of England, from a single glance at this old ecclesiastical palace, amid the stirring and splendid objects with which it is surrounded. Old, and yet not too old; retired, and yet not estranged from men; learned, and yet domestic; religious, yet nothing ascetic; and dignified, without pride or ostentation; such is the ideal of the Metro-political palace, on the margin of the Thames. I thought as I glided by, of the time when Henry stopped his barge just here to take in Archbishop Cranmer, and give him a taste of his royal displeasure: and of the time when Laud entered his barge at the same place, to go by water to the Tower, “his poor neighbours of Lambeth following him with their blessings and prayers for his safe return.” They knew his better part.

We had a fine view of Chelsea Hospital, and passed by Chelsea Church, famous for the monument of Sir Thomas More. We landed not far from this Church, and called upon Martin, whose illustrations of Milton and “Belshazzar’s Feast” have rendered him celebrated as a painter of a certain class of subjects, and in a very peculiar style. He was engaged on a picture of the Judgment, full of his mannerism, and sadly blemished by offences against doctrinal truth, but not devoid of merit or of interest. He asked about Allston and his Belshazzar, and also made inquiries about Morse, of whose claim as the inventor of the Electric Telegraph, he was entirely ignorant. Returning, we landed at Lambeth, and my friend left his card at the Archbishop’s; observing, as we passed into the court, that we should find the door of the residence itself standing open, with a servant ready to receive us, as we accordingly did. Such is the custom.

We then crossed Westminster bridge, and went to Whitehall, on foot, visiting the Banqueting-room, now a royal chapel. The Apotheosis of James the First, by Rubens, adorns the roof, but I tried in vain to be pleased with it. The first question—“which is the fatal window through which King Charles passed to the scaffold”—I asked quite in vain, for nobody seems to be entirely sure about it. The chapel is heavy, and unecclesiastical, although more like a sanctuary, in appearance, than the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. We went into the court, or garden behind the Banqueting-house, to look at James Second’s statue, by Grinling Gibbons. It is in Roman costume, and defiled by soot and dust, and the peculiar pointing position of one of its hands, has given currency to a vulgar error, that it indicates the spot where the blood of Charles fell from the scaffold. A soldier mounts guard in this place, for it is yet regarded as a royal palace; all beside is quiet, and I often returned to the spot during my residence in London, as one well fitted for meditation, recalling such historical associations as memory retained, and striving in vain to conceive it possible that here, in very deed, such thrilling scenes were enacted two hundred years ago. Even now there is nothing ancient about the looks of Whitehall. It requires an effort to connect it at all with the past: and when one sees the vane upon its roof, and imagines it the very one to which James Second was always looking, while he prayed the Virgin and all the Saints to keep William of Orange off the coast, even the era of 1688 seems reduced to a modern date, and stripped of all its character as something ancestral, and belonging to past time. I confess that in this garden of Whitehall, I awoke from an American illusion, and began to feel that two centuries is a very short period of time; just as afterward, on the Continent, the scale took another slide upwards, and taught me to feel that everything is modern which has happened since the Christian era. This discovery gives one a curious sensation, and I am not sure that I am the happier for having seen monuments of real antiquity, which have had the effect of freshening the comparative antiquity of England, and of reducing everything in America to the dead level of time present. I was happier when I visited the ruins of the old Fort on Lake George, and innocently imagined it a spot both ancient and august.

My reader will think my day sufficiently full already, but I must not conclude without some reference to the pleasures of the evening. I drove out to Chelsea, where the pupils of St. Mark’s Training College performed the Oratorio of “Israel in Egypt.” The hail-stone chorus was given with great effect, and several of the solos and recitatives were creditably executed. I saw there, among others, Lord Monteagle, better known as Mr. Spring Rice, but was more pleased with an introduction to the head of the College, Mr. Derwent Coleridge, who showed me a very striking portrait of his father—“the rapt one of the godlike forehead,” and made some feeling allusions to his brother Hartley, then lately dead. I saw also another member of this interesting family, Sara Coleridge, one of the cleverest of womankind. Returning to London, I stepped from the carriage at Hyde Park Corner, where chariots and wheels of every description were still rumbling incessantly, and where the gas-lamps made it light as day, though it was now eleven o’clock. I looked at Apsley-house, where the Iron Duke was then living, and so made my way along Piccadilly and St. James’s-street, as pleasantly as if I had known them all my days, but thinking such thoughts as nothing but an American’s earliest experiences of London life can possibly inspire.

Hyde Park—Excursion to Oxfordshire.

My plan was to fix my head-quarters in London, and to make excursions thence into the various parts of the country which I desired to see. This enabled me to choose my times for being in the Metropolis, and also for visiting other places; and I found it better, on many accounts, than the more usual method of seeing London all at once, and then going through the rest of England in a tour. I took lodgings in Bury-street, St. James’s, a time-honored place for the temporary abode of strangers, and in all respects convenient for my purposes. On looking into Peter Cunningham, I found I had unwittingly placed myself near the old haunts of several famous men of letters. Dean Swift lodged in this street in 1710, and Sir Richard Steele about the same time. Crabbe took his turn here in 1817, and here Tom Moore was sought out by Lord Byron, a few years earlier. Just round the corner, in Jermyn-street, Gray used to sojourn; and there, too, Sir Walter Scott lodged for the last time in London, after his return from the Continent in 1832. Hard by, still lives old Samuel Rogers, and Murray’s famous publishing-house is but a few steps out of the way. I was, at first, a little provoked at Cunningham for getting up a book which tends to put the most stupid visitor of London on a footing with the man whose general reading has fitted him to enjoy it: but many little pleasures which he thus supplied me, by recalling things forgotten, quite altered my humour towards him; especially as I soon reflected that the traveller to whom he only restores such information, must always have the advantage over one who gains it for the first time, at second hand.

I could now step into St. James’s Park, and freshen my appetite for breakfast, while enjoying its delightful air, and venerable associations. I soon learned how to protract my walk, passing Buckingham Palace, up Constitution Hill, and so into Hyde Park—where one may spend the day delightfully, and almost fancy himself in the country. Indeed, stretching one’s rambles into Kensington Gardens, it is not easy to be moderate in the enjoyment, or to return without fatigue; so vast is the extent of these successive ranges, and so much of England can one find, as it were, in the midst of London. Oh, wise and prudent John Bull, to ennoble thy metropolis with such spacious country-walks, and to sweeten it so much with country air! Truly these lungs of London are vital to such a Babylon, and there is no beauty to be compared to them in any city I have ever seen. Talk of the Tuilleries—talk of the Champs Elysées—you may throw in Luxembourg and Jardin des Plantes to boot, and in my estimation Hyde Park is worth the whole. I do not think the English are half proud enough of their capital, conceited as they are about so many things besides. They are ashamed of Trafalgar Square and some other slight mistakes, and they always apologize for London, and wonder what a foreigner can find to please him, in the mere exterior of its immensity. But foreigner, forsooth! I always felt that an Anglo-American may feel himself far more at home in London, than many who inhabit there. Who are the reigning family, but a race of Germans, never yet completely naturalized either in Church or State? What is England to Prince Albert, except as he can use it for his own purposes? But to me, and to many of my countrymen, it is as dear as heart’s blood; every fibre of our flesh, every particle of our bone, and the whole fabric of our thought, as well as the vitalizing spirit of our holy religion, being derived from the glorious Isle, in whose own tongue we call her blessed. It is not as unfilial to America, but only as faithful to the antecedents of my own beloved country, that I ask no Englishman’s leave to walk the soil of England with filial pride, and in some sense to claim “a richer use of his,” than he himself enjoys. He dwells in it, and uses it of necessity for some ignoble purposes; but I have no associations with the malt-tax, or with manufactories. England reveals herself to me only in her higher and nobler character, as the mother, and nurse, and glorious preceptress of the race to which I belong. Hence, I say, it is only a true American who can feel the entire and unmixed sentiment and poetry of England.

It was soon after my arrival in the Metropolis that I went, one afternoon, to see the display of horsemanship, in Hyde Park. Strange that the scene of so much aristocratic display should be known as “Rotten-Row!” It is a road for saddle-horses exclusively, and very exclusive are the equestrians generally, who enjoy their delightful exercise in its pale. Here you see the best of horse-flesh, laden with the “porcelain-clay” of human flesh. The sides of the road are lined with pedestrians, some of whom touch their hats to the riders, and are recognized in turn; but most of them look wishfully on the sport of others, as if they were conscious that they were born to be nobody, and were unfeignedly sorry for it. Ha! how dashingly the ladies go by, and how ambitiously their favored companions display their good fortune in attending them! Here a gay creature rides independently enough, with her footman at a respectful distance. She is an heiress, and the young gallants whom she scarcely deigns to notice, are dying of love for her and her guineas. Here comes an old gentleman and his two beautiful daughters. It is Lord ——, and the elder of the twain is soon to be married, the fortunate expectant being a nobleman of large estates. We look in vain this afternoon for “the Duke.” But very likely we shall see him before our walk is done. Yonder whirls a barouche, with outriders. It is the Queen and Prince Albert taking an airing. A Bishop comes along on horseback. “It must be one of the Irish Bishops,” said the friend with whom I was walking, “for I certainly have never seen him before.”

I now saw the Crystal Palace for the first time, and scarcely looked at it at all. It was just what every body knows, from ten thousand pictures. I had a prejudice against it, at this time, heightened by the fact that many, whom I had met, had innocently taken it for granted that an American must, of course, have come to England to see the show. The idea of going to England to look at anything short of England itself! Besides, I supposed it a mere toy of Prince Albert’s—just the thing for a Dutch folly—or, like the Russian ice-palace,

I looked, therefore, and passed by. A fine walk we had to Kensington Gardens, and round by Bayswater, returning across Hyde Park. It was pleasant to see the good use to which these vast grounds are put by the People proper. Children and their nurses seem to take their fill of them. It was George the Second, I think, who asked Walpole what it would cost to fence in St. James’s Park, so as to keep the people out. “Only three crowns,” was the reply; and the heavy Hanoverian learned an important lesson, as to the difference between British freemen, and the sort of people he had been wont to deal with, in his darling Electorate.

One morning I attended a meeting of the Venerable S. P. G. The estimable Bishop of Bangor presided, and the ordinary monthly business was despatched. On this occasion, I was so happy as to meet with Lord Lyttleton, Mr. Beresford Hope, and others, whose names are familiar to American Churchmen, as identified with zeal and devotion to the noble work of Evangelization. The American Church, and her relations with her nursing Mother, were frequently alluded to; and, as an act of Christian recognition, I found myself admitted a corresponding member of the Society. Though I could not suppose the compliment a personal one, designed as it was in honor of the Orders of our Church, I felt it no small privilege to receive this humble share in the noble organization to which, under God, our Church owes its existence; and I felt it the more, as being myself the descendant of a lowly but devoted Missionary, who died in the service of the Society. I was pleased with the earnest, but very quiet and affable spirit of this meeting. No show, nor swelling words; and yet the spiritual interests of empires, and of national Churches, present and yet to be, the fruits of the Society’s labors, were deeply and religiously weighed, and dealt with. Beautiful tokens of the Society’s fruitfulness hung round the walls—portraits of English Missionary Bishops, such as Heber, and Selwyn, and Broughton. These are its trophies.

My first excursion into the country was made somewhat earlier than I had forecasted, in accepting a kind invitation to Cuddesdon, from the Bishop of Oxford. This promised me the double pleasure of an immediate acquaintance with Oxford itself, and of a no less agreeable introduction to the eminent prelate, whose elevation to that See has so highly served the dearest interests of the Church, not in England only, but also throughout Christendom. The name of Wilberforce has received new lustre in the person of this gifted divine; and certainly there was no one in England whom I more desired to see, for the sake of the interest inspired by public character and by published works. His known hospitality, and interest in visitors from all parts of the world, relieved me from surprise in receiving this unexpected attention, and I felt sure I should experience no disappointment in indulging the confidence and affection inspired by such cordiality. Arriving in Oxford, I threw myself into a cab, and set off for the Bishop’s residence, about eight miles distant—taking a drive through High-street, in my way. Every object seemed familiar; I could scarcely believe that I was, for the first time, looking at those venerable walls. Here was St. Mary’s—here All Souls—here Queen’s—and there is the tower of Magdalen. Even “the Mitre” and “the Angel” looked like Inns, in which I had often “taken mine ease.” A few gownsmen were loitering along the streets, but the town was quite deserted, it being the Easter holiday time. Here, at last, were the old gables of Magdalen; and now I pass the Cherwell, and get a view of Magdalen-walks on one hand, and of Christ Church meadows on the other. And now a tollgate, and now the country road—and I can scarce conceive that I have passed through Oxford, and that mine eyes have really seen it, and that fancy, and the pictures, are no longer my chief medium of knowing how it looks. How rapidly I have lost the use of helps on which I have depended for years! Like the lame man healed, I can hardly believe that I have gone on crutches. But honestly, now—is the reality up to what I looked for? Thus I thought, and questioned, as I jogged along.

Cuddesdon is the name of a little hamlet in Oxfordshire, on a wooded hill, overlooking a wide extent of country, besprinkled with many similar hamlets, and distinguished by a pretty parish Church, and the adjoining residence, or palace, of the Bishop. The residence is one of those rambling and nondescript houses, of ecclesiastical look, which one associates with English rural scenery; but of a class which it is difficult to characterize, except as something too modest for a nobleman’s seat, and something too lordly for a vicarage. The nearness of the parish Church might, indeed, suggest the idea of the parson’s abode—but what should a parish priest want of so large a house, or of the little private chapel which, on one side, makes a conspicuous part of the pile? On the whole, one might conceive it the residence of a Bishop without being told the fact, or before descrying the arms of the See, over the entrance, encircled by the Garter, of which most noble Order, the Bishop is Chancellor. Nothing could exceed the kindness and affability with which the estimable prelate received me, and made me welcome as his guest: his manner, at once dignified and engaging, sufficing immediately to make a visitor at home in his presence, however deeply impressed with reverence for his person. I esteemed it an additional privilege to be presented to the Bishop’s brother, Archdeacon Wilberforce, then just arrived at the palace from his own residence in Yorkshire: and I soon found, among the guests of the Bishop, several other persons of eminent position in society, from whose agreeable intercourse I derived the highest satisfaction. I had arrived on a Saturday, and, after a pleasant evening, the week was solemnly closed in the private chapel, with appropriate prayers. Here, twice every day, all the members of the household, the family, the guests, and the servants together, are assembled before the Lord their Maker, while the Bishop, like a patriarch, assisted by his chaplains, offers the sacrifices of prayer and thanksgiving, and sanctifies his house. It was beautiful, on one occasion, to see such a household together receiving the Holy Eucharist, and it was good to participate in the solemnity. The sanctity of my privilege, as the guest of such a family, forbids any further allusion to the delightful scenes of domestic piety of which I was so confidingly made a sharer; but I cannot withhold a tribute to the character of a true Bishop, who has incidentally enabled me to testify of at least one English prelate, that “he serves God with all his house,” and makes that service the one thing indispensable and most important, in all the distributions of private life, its kindly offices, and endearing charities.

I accompanied his Lordship, next day, into Oxford, where he preached at St. Ebbe’s to a very large congregation. This Church is very plain and countryfied—astonishingly so for Oxford; but the worshippers were devout and earnest in their attention. The sermon was suited to the Service for the day, and I was not disappointed in the manner, nor yet in the matter, of it. The Bishop is a truly eloquent man. His voice is sweet, and often expressive of deep feeling, or of tender emotion. He uses more action than most English preachers, or rather he has much less of inactivity in his preaching. Occasionally he looks off from his manuscript, and launches into warm extemporaneous address. Altogether, I regard him as very happily combining the advantages of the English and American pulpits. More than any other of whom I know anything, he unites the delicacy and refinement of the former with the earnestness and practical effect of the latter.

After a short visit to Wadham College, where I had the pleasure of meeting the late Vice-Chancellor of the University, Dr. Symmons, we returned to Cuddesdon. Our road lay through the village of Wheatley, where the bells were chiming for service as we passed. Ascending the hills, we alighted and walked; and, by and by, the good Bishop, pointing to a little hamlet not far off, said to me, “there lived, once upon a time, a man named John Milton. There is Forest Hill—there is Shotover—and walking over these hills, he composed Allegro and Penseroso.” How it thrilled my soul, as I listened to his words, and looked delightedly over the scenes to which he directed my attention! We soon reached Cuddesdon, and attended divine service in the parish Church, which was filled chiefly with a rustic people, many of them in hob-nailed shoes, and brown frocks, neatly arrayed, but in the manner of a peasantry, such as we know nothing about in America. The chancel of the Church has been lately restored by the Bishop, and is in excellent taste and keeping throughout. The Church itself is a cruciform one, originally Norman, but much altered, and in parts injured, during successive ages. Its aisles are early English; but many details, in perpendicular, have been introduced in different portions of the pile. Here and there in the wood-work are touches of Jacobean re-modeling. Still, altogether, it is a most interesting Church, and it afforded me great pleasure to worship there, with the rustics and their Bishop, and with a pretty fair representation of the divers ranks of English society, all uniting, happily and sweetly, in their ancestral worship. It was a delicious day, and the glimpses of sky and country, which we gained through the portals and windows, were additional inspirers of gratitude to God. After service, the Bishop led me round the Church, and showed me the grave where one of his predecessors had laid a beloved child. A stone lay upon it, containing the exquisite lament of Bishop Lowth for his daughter, which I remembered to have seen before, but which never seemed half so touching and pathetic as now, while Bishop Wilberforce repeated it from the chiseled inscription:—

That evening, as we sat at the Bishop’s table, the bells of Cuddesdon pealed forth a curfew chime. Oh, how sweet! A lady then reminded me that Cuddesdon was one of the “upland hamlets,” alluded to in L’Allegro,—

And so happily closed my day, that, but for some reverting thoughts to the dear home I had left behind me, I must say I went as sweetly to sleep, in the spell of its delights, as did poor Pilgrim in that chamber of his Progress, from whence he was sure of a view of the Delectable Mountains as soon as he should awake in the morning.

Miltonian ramble—Forest-hill, etc.

Horton, in Buckinghamshire, is supposed to have supplied to Milton the imagery of the Allegro and Penseroso, chiefly because he there composed those delightful poems, in which the very essence of what is most poetical in the scenery and rural life of England is so admirably condensed. But if it could be shown that, so early in the maiden life of Mary Powell as when these poems appeared, she had become the cynosure of Milton’s eyes, and had attracted him to Forest-Hill as a visitor, it might, one would suppose, be very fairly maintained, that this place alone answers, in all respects, to the demands of the poetry in question. It may at least be said with justice, that when the poet visited Forest-Hill with his bride, he realized more perfectly there than anywhere else, the rural delights which he has so exquisitely detailed; and which he has invested at one time with the sprightly aspect in which Nature reveals herself to youth and health, and, at another, with the more sentimental beauties which she wears before the eye of refined and meditative maturity. However, it was not for me to settle such nice questions. Forest-Hill lies not far from Milton, where the poet’s grandfather lived, and from which comes his name; and Shotover-Forest, of which the grandfather was ranger, is part of the same vicinage. It is very probable that the Powells were early friends of the poet, and that his youthful imagination was wont to haunt the whole hill-country thereabout, in honour of the lady’s charms to whom he afterwards gave his hand. Such at least was my creed, for the time, when I enjoyed a delightful walk over the scenes in the company of intelligent persons whose remarks often heightened not a little the extraordinary pleasures of the day.

Next we descended into a daisied meadow, and looked for the plowman and the milkmaid, as it was yet too early for the tanned haycock, or the mower whetting his scythe. Here the Archdeacon recalled to my mind a criticism of Warton’s, which I had quite forgotten, asking me if I remembered the meaning of the lines—

in which the idea is not that of narrative, or eclogue, but the more English one of Thyrsis turning the sheep out of fold for the day, and counting them, one by one; that is, telling the tale, like the tale of brick exacted by the Egyptians, as we read in Genesis. Many such comments from my companions gave great inspiration to the ramble, which brought us at last up the sides of Forest-Hill itself, where we first encountered some cottages of surprising neatness, inhabited by thrifty tenants, who farmed a few acres of their own hiring. Here Sir C——, like a true Protectionist, stopped to ask a few questions of Hodge and his family about the prospects of “the British farmer,” and the practical results of Cobdenism; and I fancied, from the interest taken in the disclosures by my young friend from Eton, that the lads who now play cricket on the banks of the Thames, under “the antique towers,” are not unlikely, at some future day, to maintain the rights of the landed gentry, with the same primary reference to agriculture which so largely distinguishes Mr. Disraeli. And now we came to the little Church of Forest-Hill, where, for aught I know, Milton was married to the daughter of the good old cavalier, but where he could not have been surrounded by a very great crowd of rejoicing friends upon the happy occasion, as the sacred place will scarcely contain threescore persons at a time. It has no tower, but only one of those pretty little gable-cots for the bell, so familiar of late in our own improving architecture of country Churches. The altar-window is near the road, and the bell-gable is at the other extremity, surmounting the slope of the land, on a pretty terrace of which, embosomed among the trees and shrubs, is situated the parsonage. The little Church itself is of the early English period, but has repairs in almost every variety of pointed style, and some in no style at all. It has had very little aid from the builder, however, for nearly a century. In the early Caroline period, or a little before the date of Milton’s marriage, it was probably new-roofed and put into good order, possibly as the result of injunctions from the King and Council, with some of whom, “the filthy-lying of Churches” was not reckoned a proof of growing godliness in the nation. Accordingly I noticed on one of the tie-beams of the roof, the inscription, C. 1630 R., and again on the door, C. R. 1635. In the churchyard is a remarkably fine holly tree, and, what is still more interesting, the grave of Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad. Here he lies, ignorant alike that his Lusiad is almost forgotten, and that his little ballad of Cumnor-Hall has reproduced itself in the world-famous story of Kenilworth. We ventured to call at the parsonage, where we were very courteously shown the parish-register, a little old parchment book, in which I observed the entry of Mary Powell’s christening, and also the record of burial of persons brought in after such and such a fight, in the Civil Wars. In a nice little cottage hard by, we found an old dame teaching half-a-dozen children; and if any one marvels at my mentioning so insignificant a fact, let me say that it was one of the most pleasing of my day’s adventures to visit this school, which seemed to be the original of many a queer cut, familiar from the painted story-books of the nursery. The cottage seemed to contain but one room, the dame’s bed being turned up against the wall, and neatly concealed by a check curtain. The windows were casements, with diamond panes—and the walls were so thick, that the window-sill afforded space for several boxes of plants, set there for the sunlight. The floor was so neat, that it might have served for a table without offence to the appetite; sundry shelves shone with polished pewter and tin; the whitewash, without and within, was fresh and sweet; and sundry vines were trained about the door. The little scholars, evidently the children of laboring people, were tidy in their appearance too, and they sat, each upon his stool, with A-B-C-Book held demurely before the nose, and eyes asquint at the visitors. Every thing convinced me that the old dame was a strict disciplinarian, whose “moral suasion” consisted in the rod of Solomon, fairly displayed before the eyes of the urchins, and no doubt faithfully used. And yet nothing could exceed the good-nature and propriety of her appearance, except the humility with which she seemed to regard the literary pretensions of her academy. Good-bye, dame! Reverend is thy little starched cap, and dignified thy seat in the corner of the chimney. True, they teach greater things hard by, at Oxford; but thou art an humble co-worker with its ablest Dons and Doctors: and happy are the children, who have only to peep out of their school-house door to see the top-rounds of the ladder, about the foot of which they climb; even the towers of Christ Church, and of Magdalen, and the dome of the Radcliffe Library.

“Yes,” said one of my companions—“when the Great Tom of Oxford rings its hundred-and-one of a summer evening, then, standing on this hill, you will get the meaning of Milton’s lines:—

To which I ventured to object, that although the heavy sound of a bell like the Great Tom would alone justify the description in the last of these lines, I saw nothing in the view before me, to account for the allusion to a “wide-watered shore.” This, however, was met by the assurance that the little rivulet, which might be seen in the mead, was not unfrequently lost in a spreading inundation, and that at such times nothing could be more descriptive than the very words of the poem! This, I was bound to admit as satisfactory. And now I made a discovery of my own. Hard by the dame’s cottage I found a spring, overarched with substantial masonry, and adorned with ivy. I suggested that John Milton had certainly tasted of that water, for that the well was antique, and evidently designed for the use of a gentleman’s household; to which Sir C——, who is a judge of such matters, at one assented, pronouncing it of the period of Mary Powell’s youth, and paying my discovery the practical compliment of producing his sketch-book, and drawing it on the spot. A similar drawing he made of the Powell house itself, to which we now proceeded. It presents the remains of a much larger house, but even in its reduced dimensions, is quite sufficient for a comfortable farmer. Still the rose, the sweet-briar and eglantine are redolent beneath its casements; the cock, at the barn-door, may be seen from any of its windows; and doubtless the barn itself is the very one in which the shadowy flail of Robin Goodfellow threshed all night, to earn his bowl of cream. In the house itself we were received by the farmer’s daughter, who looked like “the neat-handed Phillis” herself; although her accomplishments were, by no means, those of a rustic maiden, for she evidently had entered fully into the spirit of the place, and imbued herself with that of the poetry in no mean degree. We were indebted to her for the most courteous reception, and were conducted by her into several apartments of the house, concerning all of which she was able to converse very intelligently. In the kitchen, with its vast hearth and over-hanging chimney, we discovered tokens of the good-living for which the old manor-house was no doubt famous in its day: and in its floor, was a large stone said to have been removed from a room, now destroyed, which was formerly the poet’s study. The garden, in its massive wall, and ornamented gateway, and an old sundial, retains some trace of its manorial dignities in former times—when the maiden Mary sat in her bower, thinking of her inspired lover; or when, perchance, the runaway wife sighed and wept here over a letter brought by the post, commanding Mistress Milton to return to her duty in a dark corner of London, on pain of her husband’s displeasure, and of being made the heroine of a book on divorce! Our fair conductress next called our attention to an outhouse, now degraded to the office of domestic brewing, but which she supposed to be the “still, removed place” of Penseroso; and in proof of the nobler office to which it had been originally designed, she pointed out the remains of old pargetting, or ornamental plaster-work, in its gables. The grace with which she used this term of art, would have rejoiced the soul of an ecclesiological enthusiast. Moreover, she brought forth a copy of Sir William Jones’ Letters, and pointed out to us his description of the place, proving that our researches on Forest-Hill can make no pretensions to originality, though certainly he could not boast of the advantages we derived from the illustrative powers of our hostess. It was her idea that the house had originally been a convent; and this notion, she said, receives force from the lines:—